Wednesday, April 26, 2017

Everlast can basically do no wrong (apart from his cheesy first album). His solo records are among the best music released in the 00s, House Of Pain's three albums are classics, and he helped launch LaCoka Nostra into a solid career through terrific beginnings.

Now, he returns to his old-time friends (all of them save for Ice-T and the guys from Funkdoobiest) on a brand-new supergroup mixtape, launching WARPORN Industries (with Divine Styler and SickJacken), with strong features over the eleven tracks, including Cypress Hill's B-Real, Big Daddy Kane, Vinnie Paz, Gravity Christ, Termanology, and Rakaa.

This latest single and video, released today, is Warporn Industry, featuring B-Real and directed by Chad A. Marshall, like all of the group's clips:

Everlast's delivery is classic, and he looks like the coolest grandpa in the entire world.

Monday, April 24, 2017

I was better predicting the West, accurately predicting 3 of the 4 winners, usually within a game of the series' actual length, save for the Preds, whom I had winning in seven games while they swept the Chicago Blackhawks in four straight games instead.

I had a tad more trouble in the East, accurately predicting the Caps and Sens winning, but the Rangers and Pens made their way through, with Pittsburgh appearing particularly strong.

Jake Allen performed miracles for the Blues in the first round. It's entirely possible for elite goaltenders to elevate their game in the postseason (Patrick Roy, Jonathan Quick, Tim Thomas, Curtis Joseph, Nikolai Khabibulin), and it also happens at times that okay goalies enter a sate of grace they can never replicate in future seasons but actually sustain it for an entire two months one time (Cam Ward, Ron Hextall, Dwayne Roloson). Obviously, I feel like if Allen remains that brick wall, he will be part of the latter bunch. I also think it'll be extremely difficult to do that against this Preds team. I mean, yes, there's Alex PietrangeloColton Parayko and Jay Bouwmeester on defense, but it gets thin past those three. And sure, the offense features super-sniper Vladimir Tarasenko, and Paul Stastny came back from his injury and scored, but Nashville's P.K. Subban and Mattias Ekholm just shut down the entire Chicago offense by themselves, with Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews limited to two points apiece - the same amount as the Predators' goalie, Pekka Rinne, who also happened to have two shutouts in four games.

Connor McDavid was the best player in the NHL this season, and although his speed confused the heck out of the San Jose Sharks, he has yet to produce at the same clip that saw him be the lone 100-point player in the league. The Oilers also showed some depth in beating the Sharks, with Leon Draisaitl and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins raising their level of play, Oscar Klefbom playing like a #1 defenseman and Cam Talbot looking like he should have been a Vezina Trophy finalist. But the Ducks are bigger, faster, meaner, better and deeper than the Sharks at every position; I wouldn't be surprised if they won the Cup. However, I still see the Oilers prevailing here on talent alone, but too banged up to pose a threat against the Preds in the Conference Final.

Henrik Lundqvist was Royal against the Habs, but the Sens have a much more balanced offense - and elite talent that Montréal just cannot match, starting with Erik Karlsson, perhaps the best defenseman in the league. Their offense includes high-scoring wingers such as Mark Stone and Mike Hoffman, as well as power forward Clarke MacArthur to complete centers Kyle Turris and Derick Brassard, meaning the Sens also have the manpower up front to rival the Rags' Rick Nash, Mats Zuccarello, Chris Kreider, Derek Stepan, Mika Zibanejad, Jimmy Vesey, and Michael Grabner (the only wild-card being rookie Pavel Buchnevich, who could explode at any time); New York, however, has a suspect defense past Brady Skjei and captain Ryan McDonagh. Also, as I said for round one: never sleep on Craig Anderson in the playoffs.

"The Caps have the best goalie in the world in Braden Holtby, the best goal-scorer of his generation in Alex Ovechkin,
the deepest core of forwards in the East and a coach, Barry Trotz,
who knows what he's doing and has instilled a system good enough for
two straight Presidents Trophies, i.e. "tops in the regular season"." All of this still holds true two weeks later. But the Caps are now facing last season's champions, not a bunch of rookies. The Pens were all over the Columbus Blue Jackets in the first round, making likely Vezina winner Sergei Bobrovsky look like an AHLer in their five-game series. Evgeni Malkin has 11 points (again, in five fucking games), Phil Kessel has 8 and Sidney Crosby has 7, among others. Crosby will lose his cool at least once, possibly costing his team a game in overtime, and Kris Letang's absence will be too much to bear against a team like the Caps. Justin Williams will prevail, scoring the Game 7 winner.

Friday, April 21, 2017

Here's what happens when songwriters use songwriting software and a rhyme dictionary:

The songs is Stronger, and the video was directed by Monika Lightstone.

If you don't know Athena Andreadis, she is an Anglo-Greek singer-songwriter who has collaborated with a ton of people in the past decade, including singing background vocals on the late Leonard Cohen's Traveling Light, off his final album, 2016's You Want It Darker. Cohen had a thing for thin, classically beautiful blondes, after all...

Now, I don't want to rag on Andreadis, as she has won writing awards in College, and the BBC's Morag Reavley called her first album, 2007's Breathe With Me, "Intimate, thoughtful, (and) original". However, you have to agree that Stronger is none of those. It's too arranged and studio-soulless to be intimate, it's too cliché'd to be thoughtful, and nothing about it is original, from the music to the chord progression to the arrangements to the insipid lyrics. Even the title is ridiculously unoriginal, what with the likes of Kelly Clarkson, Britney Spears, Ai, Sugababes, Kanye West, Mary J. Blige and Jennette McCurdy having released songs with that title in recent years - and a shitload more that I don't know about, and a ton more before all of these.

I had looked her up when I bought Cohen's album, and it seemed at the time - six months ago - that she had registered as "alright", not "wholly unoriginal" in my mind, so it's possible this song doesn't reflect her latest album, Ready For The Sun - or it's also possible that producer Ethan Allen (Ben Harper, Sheryl Crow) assassinated her style and asepticized and dumbed it down for her to better connect to an American audience.

Either way, I had expected a much better product from her. From anyone, really, but someone who wins awards shouldn't dive this low, ever.

Friday, April 14, 2017

So, Donald Trump told his military chiefs they could do what they wanted, and of course they used their biggest toy (non-nuclear anyway) for the first time. It's as if he's never seen a single fucking movie with enough budget to have a consultant on-set to help tell the truest version of a tale within a fictitious setting, where those guys are usually depicted as "quick on the draw".

Health care is more complex than he thought, foreign diplomacy is harder than he thought, and now he's about to learn that Generals may not be the best people to handle foreign diplomacy - all while he spends every fucking weekend playing golf in his private Florida club.

For fuck's sake.

And that's saying nothing of the Russia connection...

Here's a clip from MSNBC, and this is how their YouTube page describes the video: "The Trump administration dropped a bomb that the Obama and Bush
administrations refrained from using as new ties between Trump
associates and Russian agents are reported. Malcolm Nance, David Corn,
and David Frum join Lawrence O'Donnell."

Read that twice if you need to, particularly the first sentence. Remember how the bombs on Syria a few days ago seemed to just be a decoy for hiding all the shit currently going on on the home front, to say nothing of the fact that they may have been a deception that was acted upon too swiftly by a President who needs to prove his toughness to the world at the beginning of his first mandate.

Wednesday, April 12, 2017

Every year, I go through this exercise in futility, putting my vast hockey knowledge to the test just to prove I'm as worthless at predicting the outcome of the NHL playoffs as the pundits on TV. For the record, I usually predict at a 60-70% clip, which makes me better than they are...

I thought the Leafs, being the Leafs, would not even make the playoffs, but it seems as though Auston Matthews is "the real thing". However, the Caps have the best goalie in the world in Braden Holtby, the best goal-scorer of his generation in Alex Ovechkin,
the deepest core of forwards in the East and a coach, Barry Trotz, who knows what he's doing and has instilled a system good enough for two straight Presidents Trophies, i.e. "tops in the regular season". The Caps being the best, plus "fuck the Leafs" make for a short series in my mind.

I didn't think the Pens would make the playoffs last year, let alone win the Cup. They may be balanced enough to repeat, but they first need to get out of their division, and that includes getting past the Jackets, who are making a case to become their fiercest rivals, to the displeasure of the Philadelphia Flyers. Look for this one to go all the way to seven games, and look for Brandon Dubinsky to get Sidney Crosby off his game at least twice.

The Habs finished first in the Atlantic - as was expected - but still had fewer points than the Rags, who finished in the first Wild Card position and, thus, avoided playing the Caps. I want to say good things about the Rangers, how they have the most consistent goalie of the past decade in Henrik Lundqvist, how well-balanced their offense is, but their defense is laughable and they never seem to be able to beat the Habs when Carey Price is playing. Honestly, I'm not Price's biggest fan, but if he only played the Rangers and Boston Bruins, he'd set the league record for shutouts and be the best goalie of all time.

The Sens may have won the season series 4-0 and the Bruins may be decimated by injuries on defense, but this will be a close one. Skill versus Grit always makes for a tight showdown, particularly in postseason play, when the referees stop making penalty calls and players like BradMarchand and Zdeno Chara can punish their opponents without mercy. Tuukka Rask had a redemption season, but never sleep on Craig Anderson in the playoffs. The difference will be health and coaching, and Guy Boucher has Bruce Cassidy beat.

This could be the year the Blues finally make it... but realistically, no. The Wild are perhaps the deepest team in the league, without a true superstar at any position but with players who can play at that level for a while, starting with Devan Dubnyk in net, Ryan Suter and Jared Spurgeon on defense and an offense that includes names like Mikko Koivu, Jason Pominville, Charlie Coyle, Eric Staal, Zach Parise, Mikael Granlund, Nino Niederreiter, Jason Zucker, Eric Haula and Chris Stewart. The Blues counter that with Jake Allen in net, Alex Pietrangelo and Jay Bouwmeester on defense, and pretty much Vladimir Tarasenko up front, seeing as Paul Stastny seems to be injured. Oh, and the guy behind the Blues' bench is Mike Yeo, whom the Wild fired just last year.

This could be the one where we see a major upset. The Hawks finished first in the Western Conference after a late-season collapse by the Wild, and the Preds have been looking for their game pretty much all year, trying to fit in new arrival and star defenseman P.K. Subban in their system. Well, they have, and the only question mark they have left is whether Pekka Rinne can get back to the days when he was a Vezina Trophy runner-up instead of an overpaid underachiever. Now, I don't know if he can sustain it for two month, but two weeks? Absolutely. They're a bit of a long-shot, but they're worth the gamble.

They may have gone to the Stanley Cup Final last year, but the Sharks are old, injured (notably Joe Thornton and Logan Couture), and head coach Peter DeBoer usually has trouble repeating after some team success. And now they're all tasked with stopping Connor McDavid in seven straight games over two weeks? Not a chance.

If you'd asked me which Western Conference team was the deepest at the beginning of the year, chances are I would have said the Ducks. And I did. I love the Flames to no end, but they don't stand a chance, particularly with having not won a single game in Anaheim in something like 11 years. I would have loved a Battle Of Alberta to close off the Pacific Division series, but it just won't happen. The Ducks are bound for the Conference Finals, at least.

Sunday, April 9, 2017

Some young fellas get into rap dreaming of jewels, cars and being surrounded by promiscuous women, and those are usually the type who get airplay and have the bumping songs that play in clubs and cars with their windows open; once in a while, though, one of them has a message that needs to be heard, and early this year, that rapper is Joey Bada$$, a 22-year-old from Brooklyn.

He's still young and impulsive, still "reps his crew" Pro Era and claims to be signed to an independent label - which may have been true at the time of his signing, but now fails to acknowledge that Cinematic Records is now distributed by Sony...

Still, his All-Amerikkkan Bada$$ record, which (finally) came out on Thursday after having been announced for last August, seems to be an impactful record, and the current single, Land Of The Free, packs a nice punch in the heart of one of the two issues currently affecting the United States, racial tension.

The video, co-directed by Nathan R. Smith and Bada$$ himself, keeps the focus on the message instead of the packaging, showing him teaching history to children and facing police extremism (we're way past "brutality" when murder's involved):

He still has to perfect his skills (the introductory pre-song statement says "You know" twice in less than ten words), but his mind is clear and delivery is extremely efficient.

The 1990s were great about introducing us to acts that didn't all resemble each other, what with the boom in indie labels and the traveling festivals. All bands didn't have to be big at the same level, either; Cake had one extremely successful album - 1996's Fashion Nugget, with their cover of I Will Survive- but also enjoyed moderate success with 1994's Motorcade Of Generosity and 1998's Prolonging The Magic, building a fanbase that would remain loyal to them to this day. Like Pearl Jam, but on a much smaller scale.

In many ways, Cake was similar to Soul Coughing, both containing elements of deadpan-delivery spoken word, rock, humour, poetry, irony, sarcasm; the main difference was the flavouring: Cake was based on country (particularly clearer after the departure of guitarist Greg Brown and his distinctive tone) whereas Soul Coughing's love of jazz was the underlying essence behind the composition.

Writer, mostly, in mediums diverse and similar: musician, film-maker, poet - not the bad type, nor the pretentious type. It's more that I suck at everything except producing words and shouting ideas at people. Oh, and I'm the guy who brings you UnPop Montreal yearly, helping the little guy get a voice in this variety-deprived city.